Only the elements of prosody are given, only enough to show that verse has elements and a structure, for any one can catch the beat of a line of verse accurately, and that is all that is necessary to æsthetic comprehension. Moreover, an ingenious physicist may at any time prove that the acoustic basis of verse is something different from what it has been supposed to be. Should he do so, his discovery would not in the least affect our method of reading nor the pleasure we take in poetry, though it might give us a "metric" and a rhythmic based on fact. Helmholtz's discovery of the overtones had no effect on the art of music nor on the pleasure its votaries take in hearing a symphony, although it amplified the science of sound. It is only the elements of the science of verse of which we can be sure. Beyond them it is hardly prudent to venture at present and certainly not necessary. 66 This book is addressed to young people and to general readers. Still, the outline view of several departments that may be obtained from it may serve to render subsequent minute historical study of some one form more fruitful in coördinated ideas and less apt to result in partial conceptions. The writer has reason to think that there is room for a book of this character even in these days of careful specialization. The author's thanks are due to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin, and Co. for permission to print illustrative extracts from Mr. Lowell's odes, and to Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons for similar courtesy in the case of passages from Sidney Lanier's Centennial Cantata, and Miss Hapgood's Epic Songs of Russia. C. F. J. FORMS OF ENGLISH POETRY CHAPTER I THE FOOT, THE LINE, AND THE STANZA THE worth of poetry depends on the fact that it gives pleasure to those who hear or read it. To give pleasure is the justification for the existence of any art, if we give to the term "pleasure" an extended signification. In the case of poetry the pleasure is very complex, as may be readily inferred from the truth that different kinds of versified language, different in subject-matter and form, please men of very distinct mental and emotional constitution, and in different stages of development. That the capacity of receiving some pleasure from poetry is almost universal may be gathered from the fact that in every age and in every condition of human society, poetic expression - sometimes, as it appears to us, quite rudimentary has been cultivated, and frequently with great interest and fervor. Often we find the function of the poet regarded as of great importance. Ulysses says in the palace of Alcinous, "By all mortal men 7 bards are allotted honor and respect, because, indeed, the Muse has taught them songs and loves the tribe of singers." The complex pleasure or congeries of pleasurable emotions of which poetry is the cause may be analyzed with great minuteness, because human susceptibilities cover a wide range. A rough basic classification would be first, the physical pleasure we receive from a rudimentary form of music; time-beats, echoes, and successive notes related to each other so as to form a melody; in a word the pleasure received from sound without much regard to definite intellectual impressions. A child listens attentively to the recitation of a ballad, the words of which it comprehends very imperfectly, to which indeed it may attach erroneous conceptions. Some poetry is enjoyed by mature persons in the same way very much as music is. Notions of beauty and symmetry are dimly suggested, with little regard to the meaning of the words. Conscious thought is not appealed to, but the subconsciousness is vaguely but pleasurably stirred. The capacity for this element of pleasure is substantially universal. The child in the cradle is soothed by the crooning of a simple melody, the sailors are cheered by shouting in time some meaningless "chanty," the schoolboy declaims his Homer, and the student his Swinburne, without much thought of the sense or the syntax. The words are little more than sounds, though that |